1. Reading the Political Context

How might we read the theological significance of the political 2016 events?

“The 2016 presidential exit polling reveals little change in the political alignments of U.S. religious groups.” Such was the initial conclusion offered by the Pew Research Center after the election of Donald Trump to the office of President. The Pew Research Center recorded that an overwhelming 81% of white Evangelicals supported the Republican candidate, but so did 60% of white Catholics and 58% of white Protestants. From a political perspective, these are all significant majorities. By contrast, those of Jewish, ‘other faith’ and ‘religiously unaffiliated’ polled at 24%, 29% and 26% respectively.

One line of interpretation views the rise of Trump as a further example of the “populism” behind the Brexit campaign in the UK. Insofar as this is potentially the case, it reflects wider set of geo-political questions.

Christianity is no monolithic body, and the evidence remains anecdotal, but the reaction of the world church to Trump differs in significant vein to the US evangelical voice. Distress and outrage better capture the sentiment–and it is non-partisan, finding expression in both liberal and conservative directions.

Trump, as the figurehead of a confluence of forces, demands a theological response, one that grapples with the real causes and offers constructive positions. Such is the purpose of this course.

As to the identification of theological resources, all the above factors taken together, this election suggests troubling parallels with history, most notably the NAZI era. As the above Metaxas quote illustrates, this is a warn parallel easily overused, and some degree of perspective is no doubt needed. Yet, with the populism and disaffection with the political establishment, the economic pressures, the cultural accomodationism evident in the evangelical religious voice, the fascism of the “alt-right,” the notion of America purity which mirrors the anti-immigration and anti-muslim rhetoric, reference to this historical period does provide an important theological lens.

This historical reference alone, however, is not fully true. One needs to recognise the underlying measure of dissatisfaction both with prevailing political ideologies and theologies which have not adequately addressed the remarkable social changes of the past two decades. The above factors, which might be more commonly true in different cultures and historical periods, have access to technologies that make the effect more immediate, more widespread and less controllable. Remember that the iPhone only appeared in 2008! The context is also one post-911 environment with terrorism framing many of the basic issues from security, to identity, to migration, to inter-religious relationships. There is need for constructive theological work.

The first reading (apart from the items in the links above) comes from Linda Kintz. Without doubt, it is firmly on the left side of the discourse and engages in an energetic overgeneralising, but offers an interesting commentary on some of the key issues to have arisen from the 2016 election and the religious framing of these: the divinising of the economy (including suggesting a similar contest of the bible and taxation as proposed by Bill Johnson), masculinity and Christ as warrior, the fragility of “whiteness,” and the “spiritualising of the market economy.”